


Blocking your own shot; Cheyenne's interlude

by Arnica



Series: Blocking your own shot [2]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:29:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arnica/pseuds/Arnica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter 14 of Blocking your own shot from an alternate point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blocking your own shot; Cheyenne's interlude

This is _not_ how her trip to Wales was supposed to go. Her two weeks stay in Cardiff was supposed to be simple, fun, and uncomplicated. Do the tourist thing, hit the clubs, impress the man offering fantastic amounts of cash for work she can do in her sleep, and give herself permission to stop looking up at the stars and wondering how her husband died; those were the things on her to-do list for Cardiff.

Fucking a super hot, frighteningly self destructive boy so often she’s barely seen her very expensive suite wasn’t on the list. Getting caught in the drama between him and his ex-boyfriend-slash-maybe-boyfriend-slash-boss wasn’t on the list. Being caught in a _turf_ war between aliens and her super hot self destructive welsh boy because he’s fucking _Torchwood_ which is the _one_ thing everyone told her to never touch with a fifty foot pole, was definitely not on the list. It’s probably best that she won’t be remembering this when it’s all done, because otherwise Cheyenne thinks she’d never stop trying to figure out where she dropped the plot badly enough to be stuck in the backseat armed up for hostile maneuvers to take back the semi-mythical batcave of Captain Jack ‘smooth enough to fuck your mother’ Harkness, who is sitting in the front seat and is just as sexy as legend says.

He’s also the maybe-ex-boss and she’s slept with him as well.

Something has gone very wrong with her working vacation.

So why, she wonders as Jack finds time for a flirty grin at them through the window of the door he just slammed, does all this chaos feel better than anything has in a very long time.

“Ready?” Her seatbelt is undone and she leans forward, resting her arms on the high backs of Ianto’s car seats and almost turns her head left to answer him instead of right. Ianto has the steering wheel gripped tight in his hands, face stony and pale as marble as he whips the car under the gate at the parking garage and heads down.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” They’re passing city vehicles, snow plows and sand trucks, the kind of things always kept on the bottom most levels and he still has his foot to the gas.

“Good. And don’t worry, we won’t hit a wall.”

“We won’t...holy fucking hell!” They’ve run out of parking garage and Ianto isn’t slowing. Cheyenne slams herself back against the pale grey interior, gripping the seat on either side of her tightly as they smash through a projection of solid cement into a wide tunnel with bright white halogen bars that illuminate the car enough for her to see his small smile. “Oh, you little bastard. You couldn’t just say ‘fake wall coming’?” There’s a sheepish grin crossing her face as she moves back to her spot draped over the center console. “Stop smiling, that wasn’t funny.” Except that it was, a little bit.

“I take my fun where I can get it in times like these.” It obviously takes a very special breed to hunt aliens in defense of Earth, because James would have really liked this kid with his perfect poker face, lead foot, and wicked sense of humor. “Seatbelt on.”

The tires scream as he yanks the emergency break, whipping them into a tight spin out and the internal clock in his head must be pretty close to perfect because they’ve only whipped around in two nauseating circles before the lights drop to emergency red and a piercing alarm siren starts blaring through the echoing garage they’re in. A huge support pillar whips past the car far too close for comfort before it shudders to a stop just feet from a large loading bay and she’s already scrambling out of her seatbelt and slinging herself out of the car.

It’s strange not to be as frightened as Cheyenne thinks she should be when Ianto tosses her the keys over his shoulder while he scrambles up onto the dock. “Get the guns.”

Jack laid the trunk out for convenience, rifles across the back, handguns secured across the sides and a couple tasers as well as the ammo in a well in the center. She spares a thought to how on Earth Ianto explains the set up of the trunk when he gets pulled over, even as she skims her eyes over the array of weaponry before snatching out the Colt rifle she’d set her sights on back at the place they had squatted in, setting it to the front along with a SIG for Ianto to go with the 556 he’s got strapped under his arm. Two pistols go on her hips for Ianto’s teammates once they’re free and she snaps magazines into the rifle stocks, slamming the trunk and hoping up on the bay where Ianto is typing furiously on the key pad. She holds out the SIG as the light on the lock goes green.

“You’ve got a 556 pistol in your holster. Thought you might want this one. Besides,” She lifts her rifle as well, handling the long colt with ease. “I’m a Colt girl.”

“That sentence shouldn’t be that hot.” The ability to exude sexual charisma under life or death pressure must be part of Jack’s hiring criteria because the look he gives her as he switches his weapon to live makes her breath catch. “Keep your head down, follow me on my right, and shoot anything that isn’t me.” He looks up and to the left as he pauses to think. “Or my dinosaur.”

Why not? After all the weird shit she’s dealt with so far, why not.

“Of course you have a dinosaur.” He flashes her that stunning little smile of his and grabs the rolling door.

“Right. Let’s go save the day.”  
***

The Torchwood base is nothing like the parts of the SHIELD base that Cheyenne had been allowed into back when James was alive. SHIELD was designed by the kind of guys who learned to read specifically so they could read comics. It’s sweeping alloys and curved glass, mirrored surfaces and a motion reactive AI that some Ironman fan regularly reprogramed to respond to the name Jarvis. Every inch of it’s massive building is brightly lit, regularly patrolled, and never completely empty. In comparison the Torchwood base looks like it hasn’t been cleaned, much less remodeled, since the late eighteen hundreds. Cameras easily as good as the ones she grew used to seeing at SHIELD are soldered onto oxidized copper pipes in strange spots along the damp cement walls in some kind of bizarre steampunk-ish interpretation of a secret base. They weren’t kidding when they called it Harkness’ Batcave. She’s pretty sure it was drier and better lit under the fictional Wayne manor.

Ianto is leading her at a ground eating lope through twisting warrens. Behind a room that stinks of heat and meat, up a cement incline and past a room that he is very careful not to look into, but the staining of blood, recent enough to still have a red tinge when the light glints off it’s dried surface, and the heavy locks hanging broken off the door makes her think she might know what used to be inside. Her com crackles to life in her ear with a bursts of static and gunfire and Jack sounds strained as he asks for their position. Her ears ring with the sound of rapid fire bursts and shell casings are hitting the ground so fast their metallic ringing can be heard almost as clearly. Ianto is already speeding up, long legs stretching as he tries to buy them two more minutes and Jack sounds fatalistically cheerful as he agrees. Cheyenne lowers her barrel and leans forward over it, keeping her body low out of habit as she rushes as fast as she can until she and Ianto are tearing through the corridors, ears ringing as the connection to Jack drops out as suddenly as it cut in.

“That’s the cell block up ahead.” Ianto is gesturing off to their left as they veer off so that there’s a massive steel door straight ahead of them. “Watch my back, go in high.”

“Yep.” She hasn’t run like this since she was on the track team, legs stretching to their fullest, feet skimming over the ground. Whirling on the balls of her feet Cheyenne sets her back to the wall, rifle up and cocked as she scans down the empty hall behind Ianto, finger on the trigger ready to fire at anything that makes a move from that direction. The cells are apparently easier to override, because the door hisses open in under a minute and Ianto is already crouched low, giving her room to swing the Colt over his head and sweep the long hall as Ianto slides forward keeping low and to her right.

“Damn you’re good at this.” There are inhuman growls and screeches coming from the cells further down the hall as things that have too many teeth and faces like the wrong end of a bulldog beat hands with too few fingers against the thick glass separating them from her. She slides into the room after one more quick glance behind them, pointing her gun up and moving her finger to the trigger guard as Ianto closes and secures the entrance behind them.

“James used to make me practice with him once I knew. Oddly enough, I think this is _almost_ exactly what he was envisioning.” Her husband had taken her to strange woods, empty warehouses, even a couple abandoned building sites and run her through drills just like this and right now she loves him so much for it that it would choke her if she didn’t shove it down as hard as she can.

“Oh my god, Ianto?” She’s heard that voice before, recently. Ianto hurries across the floor, sticking his fingers in through the airholes drilled into the door. Someone else, Owen, unless there’s someone other than monsters and Jack’s team locked in here, is talking as Cheyenne locks the safety on and slides her rifle around to her back, pulling out the scanner in one hand and the electronic key with the other. The cell blocks are clear, every dot locked into a cell, but when she scrolls up through the floors looking for Jack’s dot it’s being crowded across a wide space, the two combatant dots of the aliens looking like they’re herding him into a corner. Her body almost brushes Ianto’s as Cheyenne slips around him, slapping the lockpick against the frosted portion of the door to Owen’s cell, smiling as he stares incredulously at her.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Calvary has arrived.” Ianto announces as he steps back from the cell with the pretty asian woman, unlocking the spare pistols she handed him back at the loading docks and setting one on the ground in front of the cell where he stands. “Right, Jack needs backup. I have to go. I’m locking you all back in so no one sneaks up on you until you’re all out. Take these,” he slips behind her and sets the other gun in front of the cell on her other side and heads for the door, rifle slung back around in front of himself. “Get to the armory. Grab backups and get up to the work floor, cause it sounds like Hell in there.”

“And what the fucking hell do we do with the civilian while we do that?” She refuses to flinch back as Owen snarls and slaps the glass inches from her face. He grimaces apologetically at her. “No offense luv.”

“You _follow_ her, since she’s the one with instructions.” Ianto’s voice is scathing and impatient as he takes the safety off his weapon with a loud click and wraps his hands around the door handle, easing it open. “Besides, she’s not actually a civvie.” He’s far too amused as he slips out of the door and closes it behind him, sealing her in the hall with several pairs of eyes locked on her.

“Cheyenne Morgan, occasional civilian consultant for SHIELD.” The woman to her left, it has to be Tosh, makes an incredulous sound that’s almost covered up by the sharp barking laugh of the man in front of her.

“What’s SHIELD?” The door infront of her slides open and Cheyenne has the backup Beretta from her own hip in hand, passing it over to Owen and ignoring the question from her right for a moment.

“Jack says to take this, watch my back until I’ve got the other cells open and then we’re to head directly for the armoury and from there to the main floor. Three of those things are already dead, but there are still two up there and it sounds like they’re giving him hell.” The man cocks his weapon and gives her a long flat look that has her itching to draw her own gun.

“Small, dark, pretty, and full of secrets. I’m starting to think our Tea-boy has a type when it comes to women.”

“Yeah, well apparently I have a type too and it’s hot nerd who hunts aliens, so something has either gone terribly wrong or right with my life and I’m not sure which it is. Are you going to point that at me, or can I do my fucking job please?”

“Will someone please tell me who the bloody hell SHIELD is?!” The sweet brunette with freckles across her face looks annoyed under all the dirt and dried blood as Cheyenne slaps the electronic key on her cell, wishing she had just a little bit of time with this tech and the completely and literally _alien_ language glyphs she’s trying to memorize even as she lets her fingers follow the pattern Jack walked her through.

“SHIELD is the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division back in America. They do what you do in several nicer buildings with a fuck-ton more people under the umbrella of the Homeland Security Act.”

“They’re the bloody Men in Black, Gwen.” Owen is leaning over her shoulder, his eyes on Cheyenne’s hands as she works. “And Ianto seems to have coincidentally been fucking one.”

“No, Ianto has _completely_ coincidentally been fucking the widow of one. Look, how the hell are you supposed to watch the door if you’re breathing down my fucking neck? I have had a rough couple of fucking days, what with being caught your cluster fuck, and I’d like to get you guys the fuck out so I can go back to my life without worrying about eight foot tall eels and their anti-terraformers.”

“Just stop it Owen.” The cell door clicks open and Cheyenne steps back, letting the girl inside step out and pick up the gun that Ianto left for her. “You’re being an arse to our backup.”

She’s now officially over every single second of this as she crosses to the last cell.

“So what happened to the other three Ugarii?” She understands why Jack was worried about Tosh having a plan. The woman definitely looks like she’s got something brewing and needs more information to finish it, which is fine with Cheyenne. Following instructions is much easier than just winging it.

“Three of them brought Jack to a warehouse as a trap. Ianto killed two inside. I hit the third one with a car and blew his face all over the front bumper.” The door slides open and Cheyenne steps back and lets the other woman step out and pick up the gun on the ground between them. “Right, Jack said to head for the armory next. Also, these are for all of you.” For a moment Cheyenne thinks she’s forgotten the backup headsets before finding them in the wrong pocket. Overhead the hall lights flicker before going bright as the wailing sirens cut off.

“The hell with that. We’re armed, we’re out, and they’re waiting on backup up there. We’re going straight there.” The man’s eyes are steely as he marches over to the door, fingers flying across the keypad. “You coming?”

“I think I liked you better when I thought you were smuggling coke.” She falls in line behind him, rifle raised. “Let’s get this over with please.”  
***

The sound of a sustained firefight is gone by the time their group makes it up out of the labyrinthine lower corridors, but Ianto has his comm on still and there’s something steadying about hearing him breathing and cursing. Something behind him makes a low gurgling almost birdlike sound that makes her blood run cold, but Ianto just sounds distracted as he croons something cute and soothing to whatever that awful noise maker was.

“You let the dinosaur call you daddy?” Ahead of her Owen has one hand up to his headset sounding ridiculously amused. “You are a sad strange little man.”

“Go fuck yourself Owen.” She can hear the discordant twinge of embarrassment in his voice. “Watch out, there’s one loose on the floor with you and one pinned down with Jack in the autopsy bay. Stay on that side of the rift manipulator or you’ll queer my shots.” Gwen and Owen veer off without a word, heading through the cluttered dark space towards some metal grate stairs leading up to a half level mostly enclosed by glass leaving her to follow Tosh through the maze of desks and, wow an honest to god mini-moat around a clunking piece of scrap built something ringing the bottom of what appears to be the big water tower in the Millennium Center.

She knows she’s let herself get distracted because when the noise comes from behind her Cheyenne doesn’t have time to scream, much less bring her weapon into firing position. From this close, and where the hell did something that fucking big _hide_ , it’s roar is thick and deafening. Her heart slams into overdrive, shock stuttering the experience as if viewed under a strobe. The way the creature lunges from under the shadow of something large, so fast _so damn fast_ , monstrous wide maw gaped open, covering ground like it’s nothing in the too long second between blinks. A hugely muscled arm lashes out, catching her high in the side. The air is driven out of her lungs with the force of the strike, lifting her completely off her feet and knocking the Colt clear from her hands. She hangs in the air for too frighteningly long. Long enough to realize that she’s been knocked down a flight of stairs milliseconds before her back slams into the hard edge of a stair, arms smashing off the wall. The edges of the steps catch at her clothes as she skids down into a crumpled gagging heap at the bottom.

Around her glass is scattered across the floor, a metal gurney is tipped onto it’s side, one wheel still spinning, and across the room... her stomach lurches and if she weren’t still gasping and struggling for breath Cheyenne would scream until something stopped her because Jack’s bright blue eyes are staring empty at her over his open throat, dangling limp and very obviously dead from the monster claws of the Ugarii trapped in the room with her. Its head swivels on that frighteningly thick neck, staring over it’s own shoulder without torquing its body at all and Cheyenne discovers she doesn’t have enough breath to scream, but that’s sure as hell not stopping her from trying. It drops Jack’s body with a thick smack and laughs low in its throat, taking one heavy step towards her.

It’s too much. She must black out because she comes to flipping a second solid steel table in front of herself, hurling shattered glass and twists of metal with one hand, her pistol in the other as she watches the thing advance on her, still laughing. She’s fumbling with the safety, desperate to remember how to do such a simple thing with so much actual blood chilling terror freezing her. Through the pounding of the blood in her ears she can hear Ianto negotiating with the other thing above her that’s apparently holding the other woman hostage.

“I’m going to kill you and use your body as a meat shield.”

“You’ll have to go through me again first.”

Jack is standing against the wall where he was thrown. Jack is standing... _Jack is standing_...

The monster is as frozen as she is, gaping at the moving _not dead_ man advancing in their direction. His foot hits a large piece of glass, sending it skittering across the floor with a clatter that shatters the stone shock holding her. She’s shrieking, knows it and can’t stop the high whining sound of terror, but even so her body has snapped free and she’s slamming the safety off her handgun, sighting quickly and flicking the gun from semi to fully automatic as she fires.

The first quick burst takes it high in the center of it’s huge torso, opening a red and black mess that’s spurting everywhere. The automatic burst has forced the barrel up and even as she’s re-sighting the thing is staring at her with death in it’s eyes. Everything is a blur as she squeezes the trigger and Jack lunges as it jumps.

Several hundred pounds of solid writhing muscle crashes into her, cutting off her hysterical screams as she smashes into the floor. Her hands are trapped between her body and the slick bloody ruin of the monster over her, the gun thankfully knocked clear of the thing trying it’s best to take her head off in it’s massive jaws with it’s dying strength and Jack wrapped around it. His arms are locked tight around a throat easily as big as her waist, forcing the powerful head and jaws up to the ceiling until it shudders still.

“It’s okay, you’ll be fine. Just stay here for a minute.” Jack slides off the thing crushing her slowly, grimacing down at the bloody front of his button up before stripping out of both his coat and it quickly, tossing the shirt into a biohazard bin.

“Your throat was cut.” It’s a wheezed whisper as Cheyenne gags and gasps for enough air.

“I got over it.” He cuts his gaze away from her stare, snatching up a small metal tube the size of a pocket laser pointer and kicking off his boots, moving among the scattered glass silently as he makes his way towards the stairs.

“You got...you _got over it_?!” A hissed snarl is the best she can do, but it’s enough that the man freezes on the stairs, metal tube clutched between his teeth.

“You can’t tell anyone. None of them.” His eyes are flat and serious and Cheyenne is very glad she’s taking his little memory pill because the fact that the Torchwood leader _gets over_ dying is information shes glad she’s not going to be responsible for guarding. In her ear Ianto is offering Eels in crooning whispered Welsh to something that clacks and caws and Jack looks like its taking everything he has to stay still and watch her and not head up the stairs and into the fray.

“Just fucking go and if you don’t come back with Ianto, don’t be the one to come get me.”

He slinks up the stairs, low to the ground and silent like a cougar and Cheyenne stays trapped under the weight of the corpse sprawled on top of her. Somewhere above her Ianto has thrown some bass deep in his voice, roaring in her ear through the headset as he bellows out his challenge. The world is a jumble of sounds around her, the mostly silent slap of Jack’s feet against the stairs as he eats the ground, human screams, and the ringing cry of something large and hungry.

‘Don’t kill my dinosaur’, he’d said. Why she’d bothered imagining something small, and a bit obnoxious like that frilled thing in Jurassic Park is beyond her because the thing she’s hearing is large and angry sounding. It’s scary enough that she starts scraping herself raw against cement and glass to try and struggle free of the several hundred pounds of literal dead weight crushing her slowly.

“Chy, I’m opening your line. Sing out for the nice people, would you?” Jack sounds wry and a little scared underneath it, but the whooping in the background both with and without the headset is all the proof Cheyenne needs that they’re safe. She takes as deep a breath as she can and tamps down as much of the hysteria rising in her as she can.

“If someone doesn’t come get this dead ass thing off me right the fuck now, I’m gonna start flipping tables and breaking shit down here, I swear to Christ!”  
***

Ianto moves quickly. She can hear the echoes of his feet as he runs above her head and she’s pretty sure he jumped over something because his head appears in her line of sight for just a second before he skids into view at the top of the stars. He’s scanning over the room quickly, movements jerky as he doesn’t see her until the body over her gives a creepy dying twitch and she must make some kind of noise because he takes the stairs in two and threes before hoping over the railing, dropping to his knees next to her despite the glass and blood. He moves carefully, fingers tracing her face and smoothing her hair back to inspect her pupils and hairline before slumping in relief, still stroking her hair.

“There we go baby, it’s all going to be okay.” His eyes are very blue looking down at her from a too pale face while he eases his legs under her head, his hand trembling against her face as he picks glass out of her hair. Jack is leaning against the wall, sliding his boots back on before crossing the floor to kneel next to Owen who’s poking at the corpse with a broken bit of metal.

“Look at this grouping. I can bloody see through it’s chest!” He and Jack heave the thing off her in one smooth movement that feels really good for just long enough for her to gasp a full deep breath which she almost chokes on as the tingle of blood rushing back through her body turns into the kind of stabbing agony that has Cheyenne trying to curl into a ball around the worst of the pain. “Who taught you to shoot like that?”

“My daddy. Oh, this is not fun at all.” Ianto’s thigh is a perfect place to hide her face as Owen coaxes her back flat onto her back, working the buttons of her blouse open gently.

“I know.” This thing with Ianto is going too far too fast and maybe it’s best she’s not going to remember how much the sound of his voice is doing to convince her body that she’s safe. “It’s okay, Owen’s almost as good at his job as he is rude.” The doctor gently but insistently pries her hands away from the throbbing band of fire that is her midriff, moving them up to shoulder height and resting them flat on Ianto’s knees.

“Don’t listen to him sweetheart, I am _exactly_ as good as I am rude, which is good news for you since even _I_ know what I bastard I am.” His fingers are cold over her bare skin as he runs them in methodical sweeps from her shoulders to her pelvis. Cheyenne tries to ignore the knowledge that he’s looking for internal bleeding from the massive weight that crashed into her admittedly small frame. She flinches back from the epicenter of her pain near the middle of her right side and he pats her shoulder absently. “Feel free to punch Ianto if it hurts. If you get him in the face I’ll find a lolly somewhere to give you.” Experience says physicians only offer to let you hurt the nearest person when they’re about to do something awful to you. Her nails dig deeply into the large muscles of Ianto’s legs as the medic touches the white hot, breath stealing, throbbing spark of agony that makes up the majority of her left side, from her tits down to just above her hip.

Really, at this point it’s only the fact that she has made it through almost two whole days and only cried once that’s keeping her from doing so now. She may have shrieked like a scream queen from a B movie the entire time, but she’s drawing the line at crying when she’s safe.

“There’s the problem.” Owen almost makes her recant her stance as he presses down on the bottom of her rib cage and she sees genuine starbursts flicker in the corners of her sight. “Looks like that bastard bruised up a couple of your ribs, and you’re going to have a hell of a black and blue on your back.”

“Yeah, that would be from getting chucked down the fucking stairs. Jesus, I feel like I’ve been in a car crash.”

“Good.” Jack reaches over and rubs her shoulder gently. “Because come tomorrow, that’s what you’re going to think happened.”

“You’re just going to retcon her? After she just saved our collective arses?” It’s a bitch, rolling her head away from the long soothing fingers massaging at her scalp, but Cheyenne does, staring up the stairs at Gwen who’s got her arms crossed under her breasts, mouth curled down in a scowl. The fact that it seems to be indignance on her behalf is hilarious.

“He is unless he wants an ass kicking.” She’s exhausted. Ianto reaches down, lacing his fingers with hers and she clings to them. “Darlin, what on earth makes you think I want to walk out of this remembering the past day and a half? I am not an alien hunter. Trust me, he’s offered me a job and everything and I turned it down.” She nods at Jack, hovering in the background. “I’m not even done with my doctorate yet and I’d like to go home and finish that. I am _ready_ for my little red pill or whatever it is, preferably if it comes with a side of codeine.” She wonders how much of Jack’s hovering has been fear of his secret being exposed, that brain twisting fact that apparently he’s _immortal_ in some way, because he relaxes against the wall full of what looks like cadaver drawers.

“Well, how about Codeine now and Retcon in a few hours? It’ll take a while to set up the car accident you and Ianto got into on your way back from the train station.” He looks too relieved and she stares at him, hoping he can tell exactly how unimpressed with him she is even if she can’t tell him outloud what a dick he is in retrospect for demanding to use himself as bait and not telling them that it was because he’d walk away regardless. He may not recognize why, but apparently the ‘you’re a dick’ part translates just fine because he’s dusting glass off his coat, putting it back on over a tee shirt that still has a hint of blood at the collar. “Let Owen take care of you, okay?”

“Codeine? Bah. How about some Morphine instead sweetheart?” Apparently something has re-endeared her to the doctor at some point since his semi-hostile questioning in the cell block.

“Wow, nothing but the best from you, huh?” He disappears across the room and comes back with a syringe.

“What can I say? I’m a big fan of hot women who rescue me. Little pinch and things should start feeling pretty damn good.” The needle slides easily into the fat veins in the crook of her elbow and she can feel the morphine tracing up her arm with the beats of her heart, an antiseptic whiteish smell flooding her senses.

“Cold inside, cold inside,” The chemical smell disappears right about the same moment the tiny jerks slamming hammers against the insides of her guts do. “Yep, there’s the feeling good. Oh, that’s better.” She’s also starting to feel pleasantly stupid.

“Of course it is. All right, pick her up, get her upstairs and get her comfortable on the couch with Tosh. I’ll be up in a bit to do a better examination. You know, one where neither myself nor my work area is coated in alien blood.”

“Always something to whinge about, Owen.” She giggles when Ianto scoops her up against him carefully because it still hasn’t stopped being novel how easily he lifts her, but she’s not sure exactly how he intends to get the two of them upright holding her like this. Jack is there, of course he is when hasn’t he been the entire time she’s known them, gripping Ianto under the elbow and lifting them straight upwards. “Hey,” He jiggles her a little bit and when did she start staring at the necklace around his throat? “Wanna see my dinosaur?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m already well acquainted with your dinosaur.” And really, there should be a time and a place for things like this, but fuck it, the kid _did_ just save the world and she feels _fantastic_ right now. At the top of the stairs someone squeaks and Jack is trying hard not to meet her eyes, the side of his fist stuffed in his mouth. Owen, at least, is honest enough to collapse to the floor laughing which is good because don’t these idiots know she’s completely fucked up? How’s she supposed to know she’s saying stupid things if no one shames themselves laughing.

“Of course you’re one of those.” Ianto’s voice is a wry rumble deep in his chest where her ear is pressed. “Can’t handle your morphine?”

“Not at all!” She waves her hand for emphasis and slaps Jack in the back of the head, which is weird, because she’s pretty sure he was further away that that. Owen is laughing harder which means she should probably put her hands somewhere safe and only answer questions asked directly to her. Ianto’s neck seems like a safe space as she winds her arms around it and tucks her face down into his throat.

“Well, how about I show you my actual pterosaur instead of my dick?” He sounds embarrassed, which is ridiculous since he has a _fantastic_ penis and a well studied knowledge what to do with it. Cheyenne tangles her fingers in his hair, petting him soothingly.

“But I like your dick,” she reassures. “It’s pretty fantastic,” He makes a choked sound like he doesn’t believe her and this calls for backup. “Isn’t it Jack?”

“And on that faintly mortifying note, let’s go see if the pterosaur is done eating, shall we?” Ianto starts up the stairs before Jack can come to her aid, but that’s okay because the wink he gives her says very clearly ‘of course you are right dear woman, that dick is a gift from on high’ which is good. She’s going to have to forgive him for whatever it was that he’s done to annoy her.

As soon as she remembers what it is.  
***

At some point he tries to set her down. She settles that quickly by wrapping tighter around him. He smells good and obviously she was married to long to an active alien hunter if the smell of gun smoke and sweat can mix with someone’s natural scent and still be ‘good’ to her. There’s the bruise Jack left on Ianto’s neck just centimeters away from her face and she’s kind of thinking about seeing if she can suck up a darker bruise of her own _inside _it so he’s wearing her bruise and Jack’s in the _same place_ which is _awesome_ but Ianto is talking to someone and the hickey is moving which would mess up the perfect placement.__

“...you need some of what this one had.”

“Your friend Owen has _morphine_ ,” Cheyenne feels pretty safe assuming that Ianto is suggesting painkillers and not a massive alien getting dropped on top of the woman at the other end of the couch they’re on. “And Jack is arranging a fake car accident for me.” She’s been trying not to think about that because the only thing worse than being cheerful and stupid on drugs is being sad and stupid and damnit, her mouth is moving without her anyway, rambling on about the day Bryant and Ryan knocked on her door in their stupid black hats and stupid dress uniforms and ruined her life and then asked her to lie about it. She’s starting to stumble over her words, limbs getting heavy. “I need a nap.”

“Go ahead and take one.” Ianto shifts them until he’s leaning back, stretching her out against him and covering them over with a blanket from somewhere. “I’ll wake you up in time to say goodbye.”

“But not to you right? Just to the rest of them?” It’s hard to keep the disbelief out of her voice, hard to get past the fact that no matter how charming Jack can be, she doesn’t believe for a moment that he’s going to risk her waking up in the morning still knowing he’s running around like the Highlander.

“Just to the team.” She wonders if he can hear how much he doesn’t believe it either.  
***

She’s still kind of asleep, half listening to the appalled outrage in Ianto’s voice as he scolds someone about inventory, but it’s Jack’s laugh that wakes her completely. They’re talking about toilet paper for some reason that she doesn’t quite follow before Jack crouches down next to her, the back of his knuckles skimming warm across her face.

““Hey there kiddo. Owen wants me to do a couple tests, just to make sure you’re gonna be okay to take the retcon. Can you tell me how you’re doing?” He keeps his gaze on hers, running his fingers up her face, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Well, I’d do better if you’d stop calling me kiddo. You can’t be more than five or six years older than me.” His fingers trace the edge of a lump near her hairline that Cheyenne never even felt.

“You’d be amazed actually.” There’s a lightening strike quick flicker of something bitterly amused on Jack’s face and Cheyenne is actually literally nauseous at the idea that not only is she looking at someone who is deathless, but who has been deathless long enough that the man is _used to this happening_. She closes her eyes and tries to stop imagining what it would feel like to be used to your own death. “All right, see the light on the back of my wrist strap? Look directly at it.” She opens her eyes and shudders in relief that the the expression in his eyes is gone and he’s just Ianto’s boss-slash-ex-slash-boyfriend again, the hot guy who kind of gets on her nerves but she slept with him anyway.

Ianto is sounding aggrieved above her, bitching about people not being allowed to touch his inventory system and how he’d _just_ ordered toilet paper and Jack is spinning a yarn about the dinosaur stealing it all, except Ianto turns half way around and begins scolding something. Cheyenne cranes her head and freezes as her eyes focus on what is not a shadow and is actually a giant thing taller than she is hanging from the catwalk upside down with huge freakin wings tucked around it like some kind of enormous bat. If bats had huge ridged heads with long toothy bills and big intelligent looking eyes.

“Myfanwy! Stop stealing! No paper! Be ashamed!” The dinosaur, holy shit that’s really a real dinosaur, chirps a deceptively small sound and unfolds one wing, sticking it’s head behind it and there’s no way she’s seeing this.”

“Holy shit, did that dinosaur just stick its head under it’s wing?” She pushes herself up, staring over at where that large head is still buried shyly behind the grey leathery skin.

“Oh yes. Funny scientific fact, pterosaurs are about as smart as your average parrot. She’s quite bright. Very trainable, actually. Got it.” He’s distracted as he taps on the tablet in his hands. “Jack, don’t let anyone touch this. Tell Gwen what you need and she’ll call the vendors. The numbers are in my PDA. Make sure she remembers to copy and then file all the receipts with you. Also, I put in a rush order for paper goods. You‘ve paid one hell of a surcharge, but someone can take the truck to pick up a reship of our last order by noon.”

“You, Ianto Jones, are a scholar and a gentleman, and you Ms. Morgan are cleared for a thirty-six hour dose of retcon on the condition that if seeing Ianto again triggers a failure of the memory block you understand that I’ll be back for the entire time and he won’t be able to see you again.” Relief sweeps through her and she pulls her eyes off the amazing creature to look back at the man crouching next to the couch, fingers poking at something on the leather band around his wrist.

“That’s...that’s really fair of you Jack. Thank you.” She must be hurt worse than she thought, because she’s burning through this pain killer. Already there’s a throbbing pain scratching at the edge of her chemical comfort and it’s just going to get worse. They’re talking about Ianto’s car and Cheyenne tunes it out, trying to ignore the throbbing behind her eyes from all the stress until Jack says something about chocolate.

“Chocolate?” Sitting up hurts enough to slow her down, but not enough not to bother. Ianto smiles at her.

“It’s my secret dinosaur training weapon. Come on, give her an entire bar and she’ll be your friend for life.” Ianto slides off the couch and helps her to her feet, leading her around Jack and towards a mostly bare workspace close to where the pterosaur is hanging from a catwalk, wings tucked against it’s body again. It’s large eyes follow them as Cheyenne perches on the desktop, leaning back to watch Ianto go unhesitatingly for the top left drawer and dig out a bar of black and green. “Okay, sit here, no sudden moves and let me bring her to you. Myfanwy, d 'ma anwylyd bachgennes.”

It’s amazing how something bigger than herself with wings almost twice as long can move with such quick grace, dropping from the catwalk and snapping it’s wings wide to land gracefully on the floor. Once it’s landed though all grace is gone. It moves in a fat ungainly waddle on the ground, the freaky love child of E.T. and a penguin.

“So have you trained her just in Welsh?” The part of her brain that is entirely too sane for all of this is screaming that there’s a huge people eating thing plodding up behind Ianto. He winks at her and pretends not to notice the thing looming behind him.

“Not really. She’s just wants something. I wonder what she wants?” The dinosaur coos behind him as he unwraps the bar of dark chocolate, but her coo turns into a raucous squawk as Ianto hands the bar to her. “Stop it. Be nice. This is Cheyenne and she has treats for you. Go ahead, just hold out the whole thing, she’ll take it nicely, won’t you?” Ianto reaches over his shoulder and scratches the long bony ridge protruding from the wedge shaped head. The chocolate bar trembles a bit as Cheyenne holds it out loosely, expecting a quick snap. Instead the large head snakes gently over Ianto’s shoulder, careful not to knock his hand away and the huge bill nibbles delicately at the end.

She hasn’t been this in love with an animal since she met her first pony.

“And your name is Myfanwy? Aren’t you a beauty?” Ianto is grinning in a way she’s never seen from him; relaxed and genuinely pleased as the creature ignores a second bite to nibble at his hair, preening it up into spikes and cowlicks as she scolds and chortles through a range of vocalizations. “Don’t you want any more candy?”

“Of course she does. Here, let me just...Myfanwy!” The heavy wedge head thumps him between the shoulder blades as he tries to step closer to Cheyenne. “Well, aren’t you just an attention hog today?”

“I’m surprised she’s not trying to feed the chocolate back to you.” He kicks a step stool out from under the desk and steps up on it to reach the top of her ridge.

“Sometimes she tries when she’s feeling broody. She’ll fly in and drop all sorts of foul things on my desk.” She wonders if he knows how happy he looks right now. It’s maybe the only thing she’s regretting about losing all of this madness. “It’s why I don’t even keep a desktop setup on the main floor. Mostly I work out of the archives a few levels down, I’ve got an office down there.” He’s running his hands along her skin which looks a bit like suede, coaxing her to extend her wings one at a time. “Oh my poor girl. You get all banged up? Did you get hurt?”

“Aww, what happened?” Myfanwy looks calm, her head down and touching Ianto’s shoulder as he examines her, so Cheyenne stretches out her hand, breath caught in her throat as her fingers connect with warm soft skin unlike anything she’s ever touched before.

“She got between Lisa and the rest of us, gave us time to get away.” There’s more to it than that, she can see it in his face and it’s hard not to ask, to tell herself that she doesn’t have time, not now.

“Wow, you were _really_ going through some shit when I met you.” He shrugs one shoulder, watching her from the corner of his eye and he looks so genuinely comfortable in his skin that it hurts a little to know it’s all going to be gone shortly.  
“Yeah, but it’s starting not to feel like the end of the world any more.” He laughs. “Nothing like being constantly under threat to make you want to work through your shit.”

“You are disgustingly well adjusted under your crazy Jones.” Her stomach drops as she looks away from the beast she’s petting and there’s Owen, cleaned up and wearing an actual lab coat with his hands shoved deep in the pockets as he stares at her. “All right, stop making our guard dog fat on candy and say good bye, it’s time.”

“I’m scared.” It’s not what she was going to say, but now that she’s staring at Ianto, trying not to cry it’s all she can think of. Something will go wrong. Something will go wrong and she won’t even _know_. “Like, I’m _really_ scared to do this now.”

“Don’t be.” Jack is on the stairs and she wonders if they’ve planned it out to be blocking every exit or if they’ve just been doing this so long it’s natural. Either way she’s not getting off this desk without going through someone to do it. “We know this drug better than anyone, make it right here in house. Nothing is going to go wrong. Here, we’re not allowed to touch Ianto’s coffee machine, but have some cocoa, get yourself together, and when you’re ready, take this.” Ianto shoos the pterosaur away, sitting next to her on the desk as Jack comes closer, holding out a large black mug in one hand, a small white pill no bigger than an aspirin in the palm of the other. The mug is warm to the touch, a thick chocolate-y steam wafting up as she tips it up to her face. It’s powdered, she can feel a thick silt on her tongue and she feels a bit like an idiot as she swallows.

“It’s already in the hot chocolate, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Jack still has his hand out, the pill that is not her compressed amnesia still on his palm. “But you’ll still want this for the headache you might have when you wake up.”

“Then come here, I have something to tell you before I forget.” Jack’s suspenders make a great handle to wrap her hands in and pull him closer than he’s already leaning until her lips are brushing his ear.She wants to tell him everything all of a sudden, that she thinks she might love the boy holding her hand, just a bit. That if Jack doesn’t keep him safe and alive that she will come back and kick his ass so hard he’ll wish he’d never laid eyes on her. That immortality is an awfully big secret to keep, but she can’t stop the slow spinning of her thoughts long enough to communicate anything that serious. “You should make an hour or so in your schedule before I leave town. You’re not the only one who’s very friendly and I’d hate to leave not remembering _that_ bit.”

“Good to know.” He squeezes her shoulder and steps back, hands in his pocket. “It was a pleasure working with you Cheyenne.”

“You too. If you ever need any translation help after I finish my doctorate, I might feel differently about your offer once I’ve finished putting some space between my life then and now.” The room is starting to sway gently, like the beginning of a really bad hangover so she takes what she hopes is actually an aspirin from Jack, placing it on her tongue and swallowing it along with the rest of the drugged cocoa.

“I might just do that. You’re going to go to sleep now, and I’ll swing by the hospital tomorrow to make sure the retcon is holding.” Ianto slides closer to her, wrapping his arm around her, which is good because she’s starting to question whether it’s the room swaying or her.

“Don’t fight it.” It’s great advice because she’s not sure how to fight it. Or what exactly she should be fighting. Ianto’s face is blurry around the edges as he pulls her closer against him, holding her tightly and taking something from her tingling fingers. “I’ve got you, and I’ll be there when you wake up.” His shoulder is really comfortable as she rests his head on it.

“If this was another time for me, I might want to keep you.”

He’s saying something to her, but she can’t quite hear him past the thick blanket of sleep settling over her.

She’ll ask him later.


End file.
